«DOOM is our offering of rhythms, textures, and ways of being-with, together. Even as apocalypses bloom around us, we dance non-stop and launch into a drone-metal concert, howling our approach to the end of the world — a collective grieving and celebration in the face of oncoming doom. We see, feel, and hear the slow changes of an ending world, and yet we propose a non-fatalistic way of attending to each other with care, imagining alternatives to the end-of-days scenario.» If the doomer, doomscrolling his apps for hours, imagines doom as the end times that are already vaguely here while everything goes to hell, DOOM does something like the opposite: doom, here, is transposed to being a place, too – an environment not only for cynically panicking about what’s next but also for sticking to a wide range of messy feelings attached to loss and grief. DOOM leaves space for not just the work, but also specifically the footwork of mourning to pop up – that at times might take the shape of a teetering dance and heavy breath from under a lace mask. At other times, it might be dull, repetitive, endlessly riding a bicycle in the figure of infinity. DOOM is also a place filled with fog machines: obviously. As you enter through the clouds, a world emerges in which remnants of a drone metal concert seem to overlap with silly cult-ish elements, cool moves from the rave, bondage scenes. Which sounds like a lot – and it is! – as in DOOM things can be a lot but they never just bet on an aesthetics of overpowering. The people who are there are given space to do their thing as they are moving through loss, as they’re clutching their pearls and pretending to play their guitars – anchoring everything in a sense of doom not as something judgmental and distant, but as something that could be or has to be lived through. And living through it also means to figure out how to do that somewhere in-between being alone and being together, personal and political — a mediation that is partly aesthetic. As Fred Moten said in The Black Outdoors, a conversation with Saidiya Hartman: «Anybody who thinks that they can understand how terrible the terror has been without understanding how beautiful the beauty has been against the grain of that terror is wrong.» The DOOM audience is invited to enter, move through the Grosse Halle as they wish, spending as much time as they need to feel immersed in the droning sound, non-stop dancing, and moments of respite, camouflaged against stacks of amplifiers and shimmering jewelry. DOOM should have celebrated its premiere in January 2021 at Tanztage in Sophiensaele in Berlin. However, the premiere could not take place due to a pandemic. After several postponements, a film version of DOOM was created, which will also be shown at BONE. The live performance of DOOM will have its world premiere in front of the audience at DE_HYBERNATION. DOOM opens this year’s festival on Friday 26.11.21 18:30-21:30 Text inspired by Maxi Wallenhorsts writing on DOOM – find the full text here: Suddenly You’re Pointing Everywhere and Everywhere Points Right Back.pdf